Summary
UPBEAT, or the University Partnership for Benchmarking Enterprise and Associated Technologies concerned the development of a European-wide Evaluatory tool for a myriad of citizen-centric university development projects. It is supported by an introductory video presentation bottom left.
Major Learning point for Citizen Enablement
Academic throughout Europe learned how to develop
projects of real interest to citizen/community groups, including how to empower
them to develop enterprises that would effectively work for local and personal
’good’. The UPBEAT evaluatory tool enabled the citizens and their academic
enablers to continuously improve the functionality and output of over 150 citizen
focused and user friendly enterprises using this easily usable feedback tool
and thus develop solution for citizens of real value to them.
The Case
UPBEAT is a structured evaluation, open learning and coaching framework to drive traditional academics to become more enterprising with citizens, or small businesses from the community. It was developed by James Powell, with academic colleagues from six British universities, and known as UPBEAT, or the University Partnership for Benchmarking Enterprise and Associated Technologies. It has proved successful in the evaluation of over 250 exemplary British and European Reach-out projects.
Case studies, making use of this approach, reveal good practices in those universities that have already creatively engaged, mainly with citizens, small businesses and the community, in their local city regions, thus enabling them to achieve more of their desired ends. The key processes behind this programme has been simplified and open educational material developed to help academics across the globe improve: their relationships, outcomes, outputs and impact with external partners to the university, working in collaboration on projects for mutual benefit.
Furthermore, studies of the leadership of exemplary academic entrepreneurs show their role to be critical. Creative leadership can harness the power of citizens by academics deeply collaborating with them and using smarter ways of working. Much success has been shown in areas of community art/design, multi-media design, small business development, community finance and affordable housing for all presently socially excluded communities.
All successful projects depend on deep and meaningful conversations between academics and their city-regional partners. Furthermore, a comprehensive evaluation of UPBEAT was undertaken by Professor Nigel Lockett (2007), then at Lancaster University’s Innovation Lab, who now heads the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University, and was published by EPSRC. While he was mainly interested in understanding Salford University’s development of outward looking enterprise by academics seeking to work with their local communities, it also showed the important cultural change that had been achieved with the Salford and the UPBEAT approach.
Nigel felt the cultural change was significant for Universities, but that it might be difficult for it to be sustained without strong leadership at the highest university level. Nigel also felt much has been achieved in Academic Enterprise in this programme through strong leadership and the use of the UPBEAT model to embed appropriate evaluation mechanisms to help motivate and reward staff. However even though many interviewees in his study were positive regarding the progress made, they also acknowledged that much is still to be done and also how important being part of a supportive group is in achieving this goal.
Major Learning point for Citizen Enablement
Academic throughout Europe learned how to develop projects of real interest to citizen/community groups and how to empower them to develop enterprises that would effectively work for local and personal ’good’. The UPBEAT evaluatory tool enabled the citizens and their academic enablers to continuously improve the functionality and output of these enterprises using an easily usable feedback tool.
The Enabler
James Powell initiated UPBEAT, was the main Citizen Enabler behind it, supported by academics of like mind in five British and ten other European Universities. As a result universities across Europe learnt to support their citizens locally, in a such a way to enable them to gain the confidence to try new and innovative ventures for themselves
